It was particularly inconvenient to move Sidney just then. Carlotta
Harrison was off duty, ill. She had been ailing for a month, and now she
was down with a temperature. As the Head went toward Sidney's ward, her
busy mind was playing her nurses in their wards like pieces on a
checkerboard.

Sidney went into the operating-room that afternoon. For her blue uniform,
kerchief, and cap she exchanged the hideous operating-room garb: long,
straight white gown with short sleeves and mob-cap, gray-white from many
sterilizations. But the ugly costume seemed to emphasize her beauty, as
the habit of a nun often brings out the placid saintliness of her face.

The relationship between Sidney and Max had reached that point that occurs
in all relationships between men and women: when things must either go
forward or go back, but cannot remain as they are. The condition had
existed for the last three months. It exasperated the man.

As a matter of fact, Wilson could not go ahead. The situation with
Carlotta had become tense, irritating. He felt that she stood ready to
block any move he made. He would not go back, and he dared not go forward.

If Sidney was puzzled, she kept it bravely to herself. In her little room
at night, with the door carefully locked, she tried to think things out.
There were a few treasures that she looked over regularly: a dried flower
from the Christmas roses; a label that he had pasted playfully on the back
of her hand one day after the rush of surgical dressings was over and which
said "Rx, Take once and forever."